Thursday January 2nd
Holiday (Scotland)
The Daily Telegraph claims that Saddam Hussein has hidden 360 tons of chemical weapons, 30,000 Weapons of Mass Destruction launch mechanisms and 3,000 tons of chemicals. I have snipped out the article and sent it to Latesun Ltd with a note:
Dear Johnny Bond
Please read the enclosed article. As you see, it appeared in the Daily Telegraph. I’m sure you will concur with me that the Daily Telegraph can be trusted implicitly. I look forward to receiving your cheque for £57.10 in the near future.
Yours sincerely
A. A. Mole
Friday January 3rd
Mr Carlton-Hayes told me that his nephew is a major in the army, stationed in the Gulf. Apparently, Tony Blair sent a Christmas message to British troops in the Gulf: ‘Prepare for war.’
Thank God Glenn is not eighteen until April 18th. The war with Iraq will be over by then.
I picked up a copy of Survivalist in WH Smith. There was an advertisement inside for a biological and chemical protection full-body suit. I may send for one. Rat Wharf is very near the epicentre of Leicester.
Saturday January 4th
A busy day in the shop, exchanging unwanted Christmas presents. I was pleased to exchange a copy of Barry Kent’s Making Love with Wendy Cope for Simon Armitage’s All Points North.
I told Mr Carlton-Hayes that my association with Marigold Flowers was over.
He said, ‘I think that’s wise, my dear. The Flowers family have a way of sucking you into their dreadful world.’
Nigel rang and said, ‘You promised you would come round and read to me. Was it a blag or will you keep your promise?’
I told him that I was free tomorrow.
He said, ‘You can start with the Sunday papers then. Bring an Observer with you.’
Sunday January 5th
Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, formally Roy Jenkins, died today, aged eighty-two. Had he been able to pronounce his Rs he would almost certainly have become prime minister.
My mother rang and invited herself and my father for Sunday lunch. I said that I could not give them lunch because I had a prior engagement, reading the Sunday papers to Nigel.
My mother said, ‘Me and your dad were looking forward to being somewhere dry and warm for the day. It’s been raining non-stop for two days. The tent’s flooded out and it’s impossible to keep anything dry. I think your father is going down with trench foot. And living in the bloody camper van is sending me stir crazy.’
Nigel was totally unappreciative, snorting impatiently when I stumbled over a few words of a 3,000-word article in the Observer about the inadvisability of Britain and America going to war with Iraq. He is, like Ken Blunt, anti-American and has been since he went to Disneyland, where he had to wait for two hours in the queue for the Jungle Cruise, during which time a man in a Mickey Mouse costume who was meant to be entertaining the queue called him a ‘son of a bitch’ when Nigel complained about the long wait.
Monday January 6th
Still raining. The swans are swimming in the car park.
Tuesday January 7th
The car park at Rat Wharf is like an ice rink. Gielgud and his wife looked like a bad-tempered Torvill and Dean this morning.
Wednesday January 8th
I visited my parents after work tonight and found them in a pitiful state. It was very hard for me to leave them shivering over their table-top Calor gas heater. As I trekked across the frozen field towards my car, I was reminded of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. I did not have rags wrapped around my feet, but the soles of my shoes were far too thin for the weather.
Thursday January 9th
When I got home from work, I rang my mother on her mobile and asked if the camper van was still iced up inside.
She sounded stranger than usual. She said, ‘I’m chilled to the marrow and your father’s hands are blue. We haven’t had a hot meal for days.’
I took pity on them and rang Domino’s and asked them to deliver a Full House Deep Pan Pizza to The Piggeries, The Bottom Field, Lower Lane, Mangold Parva.
I then rang my parents to tell them that hot food was on the way.
My mother said, ‘Thank you, Aidy. I knew you’d come and rescue us, and take us back to your place.’
I told her about the pizza and she went quiet. Then she said sort of weakly, ‘Thank you.’
I hoped that she was not in the first stages of hypothermia.
At 8.30 Domino’s rang to say that their delivery driver couldn’t find a house called the Piggeries at an address called the Bottom Field, Lower Lane, Mangold Parva. I gave more precise directions. However, at 9.20 my mother rang to say that the pizza had still not been delivered.
She said, ‘I can’t stand another night trapped inside this van with a depressed man and a hyperactive puppy.’
I reassured her that, according to Michael Fish, the cold snap would soon be over.
Went to bed, but couldn’t sleep. Got up and phoned my parents and invited them to stay in the car park at Rat Wharf. They said they might take me up on the offer.
Friday January 10th
The camper van was in the car park at Rat Wharf this morning. I entrusted my parents with a key and allowed them to use the facilities while I was out at work. However, I stressed that this was strictly a one-off act of mercy.
Mr Carlton-Hayes and I have started modernizing the shop. I put a poster in the window advertising the formation of a readers’ club to meet monthly at the bookshop.
Mr Carlton-Hayes said, ‘I’m looking forward to widening my social circle. I’m so terribly old that most of my friends are dead.’
I confessed to him that I was thinking of the commercial rather than the social benefits.
He said, ‘I sometimes think that Leslie tires of listening to my book talk in the evenings. Leslie is more of a television person.’
I told him that I was also looking forward to discussing literature.
I went to Debenhams and bought a Kenco coffee machine, and to the deli to buy fresh-ground coffee. There was a choice of twenty-four different types of coffee bean and I could choose to have my eventual bean of choice coarse-ground, medium-ground or fine-ground.
I dithered in front of the identical-looking beans in their plastic-lidded boxes. The girl stood by with a scoop and a brown paper bag in her hands. After a few moments she began to tap her foot impatiently.
I said, ‘What do you recommend?’
She said, ‘I don’t know nothink about ’em. I’m on work experience.’
A woman who looked like a horse who had been standing behind me gushed, ‘The coarse-ground Blue Danube is absolutely delicious.’
It would have been churlish to ignore the woman’s advice, so I acted on her suggestion.
Saturday January 11th
Four people have joined our readers’ club. The first meeting is to be held on Wednesday January 29th.
Mr Carlton-Hayes has suggested that we should all read Animal Farm by George Orwell. I told Mr Carlton-Hayes that I read the book when I was fourteen and didn’t need to read it again.
A couple of sofas that Mr Carlton-Hayes bought in the sale from Habitat were delivered today. The mysterious Leslie is running up two pairs of loose covers in a suitable fabric as Mr Carlton-Hayes said he did not think that lime green fitted the ambience of the shop.
When I got home I tried to watch Brief Encounter on the old-film channel, but for some reason known only to Zap, the god of remote controls, it wouldn’t stay on channel but kept flashing to BBC 24, where dull newsreaders with dull haircuts wearing dull suits sat in dull studios speaking dully about dull world events. However, I did see the Ark Royal leaving these shores, carrying with her 3,000 marines on their way to the Gulf to join the 150,000 American troops already stationed there.
When I saw the families of our brave boys standing on the cliffs of our Sceptred Isle, waving to their loved ones, a lump came in my throat.
Sunday January 12th
I spent a few hours on Celebrity and Madness, but I am beginning to think that the book will never be finished, mainly because not a single celebrity has agreed to be interviewed.
Went to Homebase, bought a hanging basket full of winter-flowering pansies and a bracket from which to hang it, got home, realized had not got any tools, went back to Homebase, bought electric screwdriver, screws, got home, realized had not got Rawlplugs, went back to Homebase, bought Rawlplugs, came home, it was dark, realized had not got torch, went back to Homebase, it was closed, will hang basket tomorrow.
Monday January 13th
Mr Carlton-Hayes has sold some Marks & Spencer shares and raised the capital to buy a computer for the shop.
I rang Brain-box Henderson at Idiotech, the company he runs which specializes in providing technological services for idiots.
According to Nigel, he works an eighteen-hour day to blot out the memory of a girl who left him standing at the altar of the Whetstone Baptist Church, together with 150 guests, a Scottish piper and a chauffeur-driven vintage car. Apparently, Henderson ended up going on honeymoon to Barbados with his mother. No wonder he looks prematurely aged.
Brain-box agreed to interface with some OEM resellers and give us a ball-park figure for sourcing and installing a wire-free, Internet-enabled network, including inventory and book-search facility.
He said that he had attended a meeting of the Madrigal Society and couldn’t remember the last time he had so much fun. He went on to say that Marigold was ‘a diamond of a girl’ and that I was ‘a lucky sod to have snapped her up’.
I told him that I was no longer engaged to Marigold and that in fact our relationship was over.
Brain-box said, ‘You must be devastated to lose a girl like that.’
To head him off from talking about his own failed romance, I invited Henderson to Rat Wharf for a drink on Wednesday night. My evil plan is to inveigle him into correctly setting up my home entertainment centre and rationalizing the five remotes. To throw him off the scent, I told him I have also invited Nigel.
Ken Blunt, Gary Milksop and the two serious girls came to Rat Wharf for the first writers’ group meeting of the new year. Three-quarters of the session was wasted listening to their complaints about the arrangements for the writers’ group Christmas dinner.
Ken Blunt read another of his anti-American poems.
Gary Milksop droned on about his wanky novel, and how difficult it was to bring to an end. He said, ‘Each of my characters wants to carry on living.’
I wanted to say that each of his characters deserved to die, violently and painfully, but I kept quiet.
Gary read on silently, then turned to his acolytes and said angrily, ‘Which of you typed this chapter? It’s littered with spelling mistakes.’
The one with the fringe said nervously, ‘It was me, Gary. Sorry, I was premenstrual.’
I read one of my own poems, composed during a slack period in the shop:
‘Mr Blair,
You have nice hair.
You blink a lot
To show you care.
Dictators quail
And tyrants wince,
Prime Minister,
You are a prince.’
Ken Blunt said, ‘How long did you spend writing that?’
I told him, ‘Less than five minutes.’
Ken said, ‘Thought so.’
The silence that followed was broken by a commotion on the balcony. I got up to see Gielgud vandalizing the basket of pansies. His beak was dripping with compost. I grabbed the nearest suitable object, an egg whisk, and threw it at the rampaging swan.
One of the serious girls said that she would report me to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. She wouldn’t have been so protective of Gielgud if he had turned around and broken her arm.
Tuesday January 14th
I was scrolling through my phone, looking for my dentist’s number (pain in half-submerged wisdom tooth), when I came across Daisy’s name. We had exchanged phone numbers on Boxing Day, after Daisy said that she really ought to have the number of an emergency bookseller, just in case she woke in the night and needed literature.
We were both a little drunk on her father’s odious home-made red onion wine.
I said, continuing the analogy, ‘My middle of the night fee is probably more than you want to give.’
She said, ‘So if I rang you in the early hours and said I needed a good er… Kipling, would you come?’
A prude might have said we were talking dirty, a gossip that we were flirting, a pragmatist that we were networking and a literalist that we were talking about an emergency call-out service for bibliophiles.
In agony with wisdom tooth. Can’t speak, can’t eat, can’t laugh. Can drink, but only with a straw. Drove to dentist in Ashby de la Zouch.
Stern receptionist said, ‘Dentist no longer does NHS patients. Mr Marshall only sees private patients these days.’
Drove around Ashby looking for an NHS dentist. Severe pain forced me back to Marshall’s surgery, where I begged the receptionist for an urgent appointment.
Things have certainly changed since I was last there in 1987. There is a tank full of tropical fish in the ceiling above the dentist’s chair.
Mr Marshall invited me to call him Marcus and, after examining my teeth, told me that a full course of treatment, including the removal of the wisdom tooth, would cost me £999 excluding VAT and the dental technician’s fees and the services of an oral hygienist.
I was off my head on Nurofen Extra and had spent a sleepless pain-crazed night, so I nodded my agreement and passed over my Visa card.
I am calmer now.
Wednesday January 15th
Drinks with B-BH and N.
Mia Fox has complained yet again about the noise from my apartment. She came down tonight to ask when the party was going to finish. Brain-box Henderson was demonstrating the home cinema freeze-frame option. Unfortunately it was the brandy butter scene from Last Tango in Paris and Marlon Brando’s bum filled half my wall. I saw the look of disgust on Ms Fox’s face.
I said, ‘I can’t understand why I never hear your noise through my ceiling.’
Ms Fox said, ‘I live simply, without any form of sound reproduction. I think, I meditate and I walk barefoot. I converse with no one. I live in silence. My apartment is a sanctuary, a retreat from the world.’
I asked her what she did for a living.
She said, ‘I work in air traffic control at East Midlands Airport.’
‘A stressful job,’ I murmured.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘and I have to be on duty at 6 a.m., and your pornographic film party is keeping me awake.’
Brain-box came to defend me, saying, ‘Adrian is the last person to be interested in pornography and we’re certainly not having a party.’
‘We’re certainly not,’ said Nigel, who’d been in a strange mood all evening. ‘I’ve had more fun unblocking a drain!’
Brain-box Henderson unfroze the plasma screen and Marlon Brando’s bum began to gyrate and Mia Fox left.
Brain-box showed me how to use the remote several times, but I couldn’t concentrate properly. I was too aware of Mia Fox’s hypersensitive nerves.
I asked Brain-box if he could modulate the sound in any way.
He looked at me as though I was mad and said, ‘You can’t have quiet sound nowadays, Moley. THX is here to stay.’
He offered to drive Nigel home, which saved me a job. I was glad to see the back of them.
I got undressed and lay on my futon and tried to stifle a cough. I was conscious that Mia Fox was lying above me and that a coughing fit could keep her awake and thus cause a mid-air collision.
On re-reading this entry I realize that I should have written ‘Brando butter’ rather than ‘brandy butter’.
Tuesday January 21st
I have been very ill for the past five days. At one point (Friday 17th at 3 p.m.) it was touch and go w
hether I would be admitted to hospital with a severe upper respiratory infection.
Dr Ng’s receptionist said Dr Ng could not come out to me because I had moved out of his practice area. She said, ‘You should find yourself another primary healthcare centre.’
I asked her what a primary healthcare centre was.
She said, ‘It’s a doctor’s surgery.’
I was in no condition to drag myself around the primary healthcare centres of Leicester and ask to be taken on to their books.
I rang NHS Direct and the nurse on the end of the line said, ‘You could send for an ambulance, but why don’t you have a Lemsip and tuck yourself up in bed and see what happens, dear?’
I chose the Lemsip option, but, as I said, it was touch and go.
Eventually Mr Carlton-Hayes came to my rescue by asking his next-door neighbour, Dr Sparrow, to visit me on a private basis. Sparrow was very kind, but his prescription, which was also written on a private basis, cost me £30 at the BUPA pharmacy. I asked if they accepted credit cards, and the pharmacist said, ‘Yes, but we add a 5 per cent surcharge for admin costs.’
Nigel and Brain-box Henderson have both been laid low by the virus, which is suspected to have originated in Indonesia from intensive prawn breeding. Globalization is a double-edged sword.
Wednesday January 22nd
In my absence, Leslie has been helping out at the shop. I hope he/she is only a temporary helper. Why can’t I frankly and fearlessly hit the nail on the head, seize the pig by its tail and simply ask Mr Carlton-Hayes if Leslie is a man or a woman?
Thursday January 23rd
I was thrilled to receive a text from Daisy today: